Talking turkey

By: Mrs Robot

We had turkey for Christmas dinner this year.

"Yeah, yeah," you say, "everyone has turkey at Christmas." But we usually have goose, so this was a bit of a departure for us.

We also often have visitors on either Christmas Day or Boxing Day, but this time it was just the two of us (plus two greedy cats). It made the whole thing much more relaxed than usual. Mr Robot took over cooking duties. We started with prawn cocktail. That can sometimes be a bit of a sad dish, with teeny little prawns and some sweetener-laden glop out of a bottle, but in this case the sauce was made from scratch, covering the big, beautiful prawns we had in the freezer, and it all felt really luxurious. The prawns were so large the six we had each felt almost too much. And the hint of smoked paprika in the sauce really benefitted the whole dish. I could eat a lot of that!

After that we moved on to the classic turkey dinner.

Something fresh!

By: Mrs Robot

We're still around and still cooking - but as it's been three months since I last posted anything, I thought I'd better put something up. Anything.

It's been culinary sadtimes in the House of Robots, as our beloved butcher has closed its Trowbridge branch. We always thought it was a bit odd that a butcher as prestigious as Walter Rose had their second store in Trow, and over the past decade business in the town has slowed to the point where they're focussing on the restaurant trade. They're keeping their shop in Devizes, though, so we're taking a weekly drive over there now.

Leaving aside my sadness about what this means for my town - every time an essential shop closes, all the others lose a little more business - it is nice going to the Devizes branch, as business there is brisker so they have much more stock in the shop; among the things we got this week were smoked mutton and smoked chicken. There's also a fish counter at the Devizes branch (it had to be preordered in Trowbridge, which we were never organised enough to do) and it's been enjoyable having that as an option.

These prawns were absolute monsters, and we wanted to do them justice, so Mr Robot did them following Meera Sodha's tamarind and honey prawn recipe from her book Made In India. Served on vegetable cous cous with a cucumber and yoghurt raita, they were refreshing and delicious. We'll definitely be having them again!